The University of Texas, Austin, recently announced that Sarah Bird [2] and Diane Wilson are the winners of this year's Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowships [3]. Both will receive a four-month stay at Paisano, a retreat west of Austin, and a monthly stipend of five thousand dollars. The fellowships, sponsored by the University of Texas [4] and the Texas Institute of Letters [5], allow Texas writers (or writers who have written significantly about Texas) to live and work at the late J. Frank Dobie’s 254-acre ranch.

And just who, exactly, was J. Frank Dobie? He was an old-school Texan who wrote a bunch of books, including Cow People (1964) and Rattlesnakes (1965), that depicted the good life in rural Texas. But don't take my word for it; watch the well-groomed gentleman in the video below.